


The Productions of Time

by MumblingSage



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: (at least it started that way), 5+1 Things, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Asexuality Spectrum, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minisode: The Night of the Doctor, Shower Sex, Snogging, Time War Angst, smootches, the year of intelligent tigers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:16:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s meant to be more than a kiss and yet a kiss will never be enough.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Five times the Doctor and Karl kissed between pages in The Year of Intelligent Tigers. And then one more meeting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Productions of Time

**Author's Note:**

> “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”  
> -William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

1\. Chocolate Martini

 “Is this home?”

The question hangs in the air, lingering between the babble of the Emerson and the shush of wind stirring the grass. The Doctor is looking at him, seeking an answer, and Karl can’t give one. He can’t say anything for fear of breaking this moment. The answers aren’t his, anyway. He knows only what he desperately wants to be true.

That the Doctor really has found a home on Hitchemus, after a hundred years waiting in the wrong place and God knows how long wandering elsewhere. That he could be content here. That he wants happiness after all. Not adventure.

Karl’s sleeve is still creased where the Doctor was clutching it. The memory of that touch, that seeking contact, urges him forward.

To what he desperately wants.

The Doctor doesn’t move as their faces draw closer. At the last second Karl bends his head, keeping their noses from colliding in the kiss. Not that he would have noticed even if they had; physical sensation comes behind as a thousand thoughts fall across his brain like a meteor shower when it happens, _it’s happening, at last._

It’s been a long but subtle, semi-subconscious debate about the nature of their relationship. Of course Karl has been attracted to the Doctor since he first met him, but that attraction went beyond the physical. Subsumed it until it was only a shadow, a background beat they moved in rhythm to without needing to hear, without needing to mention. He remembers his hands moving under the Doctor’s shirt, fingertips skimming smooth, muscular flesh, pressing the miniature microphone over his hearts. Plural. What kind of intimacy is even possible with a creature like this?

Sometimes they behave as if they’re lovers already—outings in the countryside together, lounging around each other’s flats half-dressed and wholly unbothered, the interplay of composing and performance like a seduction. And sometimes Karl catches himself thinking that they’re not lovers, _yet._ But taking a step in that direction with an explicit physical touch—this kiss is still in just its first instant—feels like potentially overstepping. Maybe the Doctor’s not wired for this. Or, like intoxication, he only reaches such a state when he wants to. And does he want to, with Karl?

He has to know, suddenly. He’s desperate, almost like the Doctor is, for something more, something he can’t name. Something the kiss might reveal.

The Doctor’s lips are cold, and closed, and because of that he can’t taste them, only chocolate and alcohol turning sour in his own mouth. But the kiss is soft and Karl feels him shift under it, mold to it. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, and under his own rapid pulse Karl can only hear wind in the grass, raising a citrus tang that hovers in his senses.

Silently with his lips Karl tries to shape _Yes._ He tries to say _Please._ Not with words. This is meant to be more than a kiss and yet already he knows that a kiss will never be enough.

And then it’s over. Karl is the one to pull back, overcome by a wash of uncertainty. The Doctor seems unoffended by either his cowardice or his initial forwardness. It’s hard to make out his expression by moonlight and a fading lightstick, but his eyes are deeply hooded, almost closed, and his lips are still kiss-shaped and Karl can’t shake the feeling that something in him has surrendered. But he’s not certain if it’s a surrender he wants, exactly, or even if it’s only wishful thinking.

The Doctor takes up his violin again and begins to play. Six notes rise and interweave and then—then he changes direction midtune, drops into something low and rapid like the crash of distant thunder or a bolder wind stirring across the plains towards them. Karl can only sit and listen while goose bumps prickle on his arms and he feels like his very nerves are shivering.

The strings hum for a few seconds after the Doctor lifts his bow from them. And then they fall silent, and the two men pack their things and start back for the city.

The next day, after the fiasco of a solo, after the Doctor clings to him and begs Karl not to cut him off, insisting it was all because of _his_ music, that all he was doing was giving in to it—Karl wonders if that might be a metaphor for something else.

But a lover’s quarrel is no way to run an orchestra or compose a concerto. Music requires more discipline than that. And Karl’s not sure the Doctor understands the concept of discipline.

He’s certain he will never know the discipline it takes for Karl to walk to the door, past the ruins of a shattered violin, and stand there holding it open as sheet music scatters around him and, somewhere in the storm, the Doctor stalks out.

But even that might not be enough to make up for the moment he’d crushed their mouths together, drunk on chocolate martinis.

2\. Cold and Hunger

 _“Lo non mi period, dottor mio, di coraggio_ ,” Karl whispers. Trying not to look beyond him at his hovering guard, the wall of orange muscle and white teeth and claws and eyes that are far too intelligent. 

This will pass.

Karl knows it will but isn’t sure if he’ll be there to see it. If he’ll survive or worse. If he won’t also be lost, or at least everything that makes him worth being himself—a civilized human being, not a prisoner cold and scared and half-naked before the elements and so hungry that he almost dreams he could disown his nausea at the tiger’s raw meat.

If he forgets where he comes from, he doesn’t think what remains will be like the Doctor. Princely, beautiful, heroic. Without a past, without needing one. Although the Doctor has changed, too, with his chopped hair and bare feet. He’s gentle, but there’s something untame about him, as if Karl wouldn’t be surprised if he sprouted hooves and horns like an ancient satyr.

And yet he still clings to him.

This will pass, but he can’t let go of him yet.

The Doctor holds him too, a hand at his waist and another at the nape of his neck, their foreheads pressed together. Maybe he is also reluctant to leave. There is no guarantee this time—there never has been, Karl realizes, seeing it at last and giddy above the void of uncertainty that has always gaped beneath his feet—no reason at all to assume they’ll ever meet again.

It’s no wonder his own courage is failing.

He feels a touch as if it’s climbing his spine, warm and electric, vibrant as the sound of his own music singing from the violin the Doctor took up. Music that still echoes in the air, under his skin. Now the fingers at the back of his skull spread, cradling as the Doctor moves his head. But Karl’s hand is also reaching in his short hair, and it’s unclear who begins the kiss. It flows too naturally as an extension of the rest of their touching, cradling, comfort-seeking.

As before, his lips are cool and soft. The skin of his jawline is smooth and Karl worries about scratching with his stubble. The Doctor doesn’t seem to share his concerns. He meets the kiss firmly, so that the pressure of it can travel all the way to Karl’s toes and somehow make him lighter and it’s more than the glitter and fancy of a schoolboy crush, but it’s also so utterly different, utterly incongruous with where and what they actually are.

Like the music the Doctor played for him. An attempt to remind Karl of who he is, who he could be, to give him courage.

Something about it reminds Karl of the flowers the tigers gave him to eat—strange and sweet, ultimately insubstantial. Not possibly enough to be sustaining. Yet somehow it is.

3\. Beethoven’s Fifth

When he had to live on a tutor’s salary, Karl occasionally had to teach students he didn’t like much. He even remembers a few students who made him nervous, who left him breathing a sigh of relief as the studio door shut behind them. But never has he had to deal with a class that produced fear and loathing like he has for the orange monsters.

He tries to focus on Beethoven, on a symphony almost eight hundred years old and never surpassed. On music as a universal language, as pure concept. Beauty and elegance that are self-evident, that he could share with an empty room simply for the pleasure he would personally take in considering them.

And at least he can endure sharing it. The symphony is at no risk of defilement even from the tigers.

It helps that the tigers aren’t the only aliens attending to his lecture. The Doctor doesn't have anything to learn about Beethoven’s Fifth, surely. But he watches Karl and Big and the circle of tigers with eyes as bright as a child’s at a puppet show.

Maybe puppets are an unfortunate metaphor. Because the Doctor isn’t the audience of the show so much as a puppeteer himself. Karl’s done as much as he can—leading the tiger’s captive human orchestra in the destruction of their instruments, now bringing out the datacube and speakers and leading a lesson of his own apparent free will. But he can’t shake the feeling that somehow the Doctor has brought this all about, and maybe it’s this latest discovery of the storehouse or maybe it’s Karl’s lecture but whatever result he’s working towards, his excited glow suggests he’s getting it.

Which should be good.

Which is good.

Karl does trust him.

He’s aware, too, that the Doctor trusts him. Trust he wears like a costume—not a puppet on strings, no, but a full-fledged actor. A director, as much as a conductor, never knows everything his players are thinking. Whether they’re performing the truth as they see it, or pretending to go along with a favored interpretation while inside churns a maelstrom in opposition.

The Doctor sees Karl and the tigers not only exchanging knowledge but growing closer. His eyes are bright with the reflection of a budding friendship. The Doctor _cares_ about all of them, and this is what makes Karl’s stomach turn, his hand shudder as he points out a line of notes and his tongue twist around words of explanation. The Doctor cares about Karl no more and no less than he cares for the creatures that imprisoned him, that slaughtered Besma Grieve and so many others, that _ate_ them…

He can’t think about it. He focuses on the music, timeless, unchanging. All else will pass. Genius will not.

And afterwards, as Karl presses a button that folds the speakers from the air and prepares to put the datacube away, the Doctor comes closer to him.

“Well done, Karl!”

The praise kindles a glow in him despite everything. Then comes the pressure of the Doctor’s hands on his shoulders, pulling him near, and this time the Doctor is the one to initiate the kiss. It comes from pure high spirits, an expression of contagious excitement. Or what should be contagious. Karl still knows better than to think the humans and tigers are being brought happily together. And part of him wonders how bemused the furry nightmares must be, watching their pet aliens start to devour each other.

Though it’s not really a devouring kiss. Just for a moment it slips towards that. Karl clutches the Doctor’s arms and opens his mouth, as if he shares a tiger’s senses and could learn him by taste. Trusting that the Doctor can’t do the same. He tries to forget that he has anything to hide.

He tries to lose himself in it. And he pretends that this is all and only for him.

4\. Pollen

The brush of Karl’s fingers through his fur-fine hair seems to bring the Doctor out of his brainstorm of possibilities. “Doctor,” he starts, “when this is all over…”

“Yes?”

It is imagination that weights the word with expectation? For a moment Karl almost changes what he is about to say, but in the end he only observes, “We have got to do something about your hair.”

“Oh.” The Doctor pulls back and gets up from the sofa, moving with such briskness that Karl fears he has offended him. He returns to the cupboards in his kitchen, rifling through them furiously, and emerges with a package of biscuits and the kettle simmering on the stove behind him.

At his first bite Karl is ravenous, but during captivity his stomach has adjusted to starvation capacity, so that he feels full long before he finishes eating. Still he lets the Doctor press more scraps on him, thin wedges of cheese and a spoonful of pasta salad, along with a mug of tea. Expressing his mothering instincts. His time as a prep chef has ever after made Karl associate cooking with labor, just that, but he knows from the Doctor it’s something more. An art, a pleasure, an expression of care.

For a few moments it even blanks his mind of the memory of raw meat. Of course everything the Doctor brings him is vegetarian. He knows—

_You were brutalized by them! You want them to suffer as much as you suffered!_

He knows. Karl’s pedagogical performance with the datacube didn’t deceive him after all.

Still—he cares.

Karl dozes on the couch while the Doctor cleans up, and wakes to find the alien sitting across from him. Maybe watching him rest, maybe just staring into the dark.

“Now,” he says. “About that shower.”

Neither of them are in any state to stand and wash alone. At least that seems to be his rationale, and Karl’s hardly going to argue it. He feels the firm line of the Doctor’s arm at his back, supporting him as they walk to the flat’s en suite bath.

Waterlogged seams tear and strained buttons drop as they undress. Half their clothes are already rags, and all of them leave damp leaves and streaks of mud where they fall on the clean tiles. Karl looks at the floor at first. But as the Doctor leads him into the shower, he sees the lines of cuts and bruises from his wrist to biceps to shoulder, mottling skin in an almost catlike pattern.

“You’re hurt!” he says.

“Not really.” The Doctor’s hand hovers, settles at his waist as if to steady him. Karl wants to return the touch, not least because he does need steadying, but he isn’t sure where he can hold on that won’t cause pain.

The tigers did this, with all their playful roughness and casual cruelty. The Doctor let them. And he’s been hiding it all this while, from them and from Karl, too. He remembers clutching his arms in their kiss at the storehouse and wonders how much discipline it took to disguise the flare of agony he must have caused.

Again a surge of resolution—determination to protect the Doctor, even from himself, if necessary, if Karl’s even capable of that. At least not to let him out of his sight. He’s found sufficient courage for that.

He reaches for shampoo, starts to work his fingers through the Doctor’s hair. Rivulets of orange pollen wash out. God’s favorite color, going down the drain, leaving the finest trace on his neck and shoulders like gilt. Karl’s hands run over them, too, trying to scrub it away. The Doctor stands still, a small smile on his face, as if he finds the attempts amusing.

Karl’s arms are almost around the shorter man, and beneath the lemony sharpness of the pollen and the simple, clean scent of soap, he smells something warmer, alive. Sandalwood is only the first note of it but the rest is strange. _Alien._

The water is hot enough to warm the Doctor’s skin so that he almost feels human.

This time it’s Karl’s kiss, the one he wanted to begin since that night on the bank of the Emerson. It’s slow—they’re both too fragile for sudden movements. It’s as hot and gentle as the running water, and it unfolds in ways he never realized a kiss could. The Doctor’s lips open, and as they close around his Karl can feel him swallow. As if tasting him, or testing him, or maybe just uncertain how to proceed.

The pit of Karl’s stomach drops as he considers whether this might be the Doctor’s first time. Or the first time he remembers. And already Karl’s assuming that it _is_ something deep enough and important enough to be counted. Assuming it’s the kind of thing the Doctor even cares about.

But he knows the Doctor cares about him. And Karl’s arms are full of him and at once he’s worried he’s holding him too tightly, tightly enough to hurt, yet it doesn’t stop him. He knows that whether or not they ever are lovers, what he feels for him is love. And desire, which is neither the same thing nor completely separate from it—everything he wants getting hopelessly tangled together.

He’s taking this chance because there might not be another. Some part of him believes, _knows_ there won’t be. Tomorrow is too dangerous. Too much is changing beneath their feet.

The Doctor is letting him. Is giving in to it. Is giving more than permission—suddenly Karl’s entire body freezes and melts at the slide of his tongue, and their teeth clash together as they meet. His hands pull at the Doctor’s hips and he doesn’t look to see if his fingers are digging into bruises. He’s hard, and against his thigh he feels a similar hardness.

When he does open his eyes, looking down, what meets them is different in an indefinable way to a human male’s—although he knows the Doctor isn’t one of those and isn’t certain about the other. Being this close to the Doctor, this intimate, reminds him just how many assumptions he’s been making. And maybe the difference is primarily psychological, based on what he already wonders about. It couldn’t matter less.

As the Doctor’s hand closes around him and begins to stroke Karl almost stops it, or at least slows it, by asking “Why?” Like any answer would make a difference. Luckily before the question can fall he’s landed in another kiss.

The Doctor shows more mischief than he expected when he abruptly releases Karl and turns their bodies under the showerhead to rinse off. But afterwards, with equal playfulness he grasps Karl’s hand and pulls him out of the stall, guiding him into the next room without a pause to towel off. He’s at once driven, matter of fact, and grinning like sunlight lancing through broken clouds.

More than lust, he communicates pure sensual delight. It shouldn’t be such a surprise, given his approach to everything from food to music—in the latter Karl is more than a little a sensualist himself. Any composer must be who can feel the notes dance across his skin. But the Doctor seems to approach this exactlylike humming a ditty or buzzing around the kitchen at one of his dinner parties. It’s wholehearted enjoyment but not precisely the way any human would approach it.

And it makes him beautiful, while the joy is contagious, removing all of Karl’s second guessing. His fingers wrap tight around the hand holding them, curving towards the wrist. And then they fly open, releasing the Doctor as he falls back.

His bed is perfectly made, to the point that it seems untouched. Karl wonders if he ever sleeps. It’s incongruous to imagine him folding the sheets with hospital precision every time he rises—especially now, as he leaves the fabric under him blotched with water dripping from his bare skin. Karl comes down next to him. Bending close, he laps at the drops pooling in the Doctor’s collarbone. He feels as much as sees the long neck arch, the fine-boned head thrown back.

His pulse is thundering in his ears. And there’s an echo of it, two echoes, drumming against his palm as he runs it down the Doctor’s chest. It’s like petting a cat—and nothing like it, all at the same time. Alien blue eyes are half-open, watching him with inhuman intelligence. Not predatory like a tiger’s, but both cooler and hotter, the brightness brilliant, and the abandon complete.

As Karl’s hand runs between his legs he shivers. The Doctor breathes sharply, then murmurs his name. A soft, repeating refrain, urging him on. Cut off, then, as his finger slips inside.

At his strokes, the Doctor’s eyes grow larger. They’ve become dark, pupils blown wide with desire, and if Karl sees something alien in them now it doesn’t matter, because that would mean comparing him with anyone or anything else, and there is no possible basis for such a comparison.  

His palm strokes Karl’s hair, cradles the side of his face; the touch draws him down into one more kiss.

Karl’s free hand forms a fist in the sheets. If his arm aches from trying to support his weight, he doesn’t notice it. His lips move slowly, softly. His fingers curve, gently pressing within him until the Doctor gasps into his mouth.

He feels their lengths slide together, then the Doctor’s grip, firm and mobile, working over them. His movements reveal grace, if not finesse; Karl doesn’t consider whether they show experience. They’re easy enough to surrender to.

Even as he feels arousal building, climax teasing, feels his partner tight around his fingers and slick and sweet in his mouth, some part of Karl wants to drag him down to his level—not just sensual but carnal. To flesh, less ethereal than the body he wields as an instrument and more alive than red, raw meat. Down from a peacemaker’s responsibilities, from sainthood which too easily could become martyrdom. Down from godhood and all its awe and terror, Karl thinks even as his hands and mouth move in worship.

Down to somewhere smaller and safer. He makes love to him determinedly but gently, some kernel of him wanting only to be kind.

All the same, it wouldn’t be a surprise if above them, the alignments of planets are shifting; still he expects a hurricane, an earthquake. But at the end it only feels like a man, shuddering in release in his arms.

5\. Lightning

“I can’t play your music anymore, Karl. I don’t forgive you, I understand you.” The Doctor’s smile is gone, the light in his eyes impossible to read. “I know the ferocity it took to throw open those floodgates and drown your enemies.”

 _To save you,_ a part of him protests, so deep it will always be silent. It’s true, but it’s not enough of the truth. The Doctor thought Karl could be courageous but he has been proven wrong. The Doctor never had enemies; he cared so much for humans _and_ tigers, for both groups of aliens. And they all had their role in breaking his hearts.

“But my passion is for something different. Not for vengeance—for life. Inexorable, relentless, dogged life.” His fingers curling in the grass, the Doctor throws his head back, giving in; almost, Karl feels, caught in an act of worship. “I’ve already played my concerto.”

There’s nothing to say in reply to that. Words would be an insult. Karl sits beside him and breathes in the silence, just breathes. The calm is overtaking him now. The deep and beautiful calm that comes before pain and in time, if he’s lucky enough to make it to the other side, which comes after it too.

“Goodbye, Karl.”

The Doctor turns to him, and Karl holds very still, afraid to break the moment although he knows there’s no reason to be. Everything is as broken as it will get. They’ll fix what can be fixed—but not this.

It’s a kiss farewell.

He takes it, drinks it in, clasping his arms around the Doctor in return. It’s something, to feel those fingers running over him one more time, leaving tracks of pollen from the flowers and grass. There won’t be another chance. He’d known it the Doctor’s apartment; perhaps he’d even known it in the clearing, known he had listened to the Doctor play his music for the last time.

And had the Doctor known it, too? Was that the reason for what had happened in his apartment? It seems to need more explanation than his celibacy would. Even Karl knows a lover’s quarrel is no way to compose a concerto. Why shouldn’t he be chaste, when a romance could interfere so terribly with all he has to do? When a lover trying to save him could kill, could destabilize an already precarious situation, could undo everything?

Put that way, it’s inevitable this…this, between them, would never work out. He would never have stayed, being what he is; and feeling how he does, Karl could never really bear to travel with him. And so it isn’t ending just because of his mistake after all.

He’s grasping the Doctor’s arm, one hand spread across his back, fingers stroked by the ends of growing hair, and he’s not quite ready to let go. The Doctor isn’t cruel enough to make him.

Maybe, he thinks, the problem is reversed. The Doctor can’t afford to take lovers because of what _he_ would do, or not do, for their sakes. He can’t have people he cares for so much except when they’re like him, adventurers, outsiders. If he loved someone who belonged to the world, he couldn’t make the hard choices. The inhuman ones. If Karl hadn’t broken his hearts, would he have been able to blast a spaceport off the face of the planet and raise storms that will doom Hitchemus if they aren’t stopped? Or had he always planned to leave them to save themselves?

If only it had all been simpler. He remembers the Doctor on his tall black horse, at the head of the party riding to the kidnapped musicians’ rescue. Even then the tigers had known something of what Karl meant to him—enough to know his value as a hostage. But look past that for the moment. Pretend luck had been on their side and the Doctor had grasped his hand and pulled him astride before his captors could do anything. Pretend the rescue had succeeded.

Pretend he had never seen the raw, red meat torn by the tigers. Pretend the deaths at the floodgate had been a difficult choice, one Karl made in desperation to save him. Not for revenge or ferocity at all.

If only it had been all and only for him.

If they had just been able to save each other.

A shift in the wind brings the sound of music towards them. Six notes twisting around a theme, caught in harmonious orbit. Above the growing melody, Fitz exclaims at a breakthrough.

Karl releases the Doctor from his embrace, feels the firm, cool lips leave his. Neither of them say anything more. He starts down the hill, in silence except for the song that rises to meet him.

Coda-The Oncoming Storm

The rehearsal at Albinoni hall is interrupted by a distant, low, weird sound like the scream of something that was never alive. Karl isn’t sure he’s not the only one to hear it; the orchestra is rapt with concentration as they listen to Jeoffrey’s solo, a rondo based on the rhythm of four, woven through with the tiger’s improvisation. But Karl’s hand counts out the beats by habit, his attention elsewhere, because he _feels_ the sound like music. It drags fingers over his shoulders and scalp, rasps at the nape of his neck. Then it ends with a final settling rumble. And he knows that something has arrived.

In the corner of his eye the curtain stirs. Someone’s standing there, watching as the strings take up their instruments again and harmony laps across the stage in waves.

Karl’s first thought is ridiculous, a wild hope, giddy imagination. He doesn’t look until the rehearsal has concluded, until the musicians start to pack their things away and move out. The figure remains the entire time. If it hadn’t, if he had sensed it turning to leave, Karl would have probably dropped everything to run after.

He leans against one of the pillars at the edge of the stage. Over his shoulder, Karl glimpses something large and blocky and blue.

The Doctor’s hair is as short as he’d cut it with the tigers. His outfit is even more an adventurer’s than it was last time, equally romantic yet practical. The high boots are flecked with stains and the holes at the laces look a little worn; the stiff-collared shirt is open at the throat to reveal a knotted blue ascot. He doesn’t look older so much as wearier, infinitely wearier.

His eyes are the same blue, and when they meet Karl’s his face breaks into the same slightly lopsided grin.

“How long has it been?” he asks. His voice seems deeper, rougher, more resonant.

“Almost a dozen years,” Karl says.

“Ah… When I left, I said…”

“We had a little less than a decade to stabilize the climate controls.” His own voice sounds blander than he wants it to, stating facts. “If you look outside, you’ll see the Nodes in the street. They’ve done their job.”

The smile spreads again, and the shoulders beneath their long green coat seem to settle at a more relaxed angle. “Well done,” he says.

Karl shrugs. “I didn’t have much to do with it.”

Blue eyes flit to the stage behind him. “I heard…It was beautiful.”

It’s true; he knows how both of them felt it, rapture and sensuous delight. In times past Karl imagines the Doctor would be bouncing with excitement. Now he is entirely contained in one sentence: simple, warm, a statement of fact.

“Thank you.”

“I don’t…as a rule, I don’t come back. But then, as a rule…” Karl has never seen him struggle with words before. Discard them entirely, yes. But never has the Doctor seemed to find it so impossible to articulate what he wants to say.

“You’re all right,” the alien says at last, sticking still to the simple and warmly meant. “I’m glad. But I should move on now, to others who aren’t.”

As he’s about to turn—almost rolling, all the while leaning against the pillar as if he needs its support—Karl steps forward, raising a hand. He doesn’t touch him. He rotates the palm, from a blunt gesture pushing with it to a spread-fingered offering.

“Come upstairs,” he says.

The Doctor does.

He hasn’t been in Karl’s apartment since the argument after his ridiculous solo, the time when, words discarded, he had smashed a violin. But that’s so long in the past that it hardly matters.  Karl finds himself thinking of solos, though. The Doctor has no companions in evidence. For a moment Karl considers asking about Anji or Fitz. Then he wonders if it’s better not to.

While he puts the kettle on in the kitchen, the Doctor stands at the window. The strange metal of the Nodes gleams beneath streetlights outside.

“They should return underground once their work is done,” he observes as Karl hands him a steaming cup.

“They will.” Karl remembers suddenly a line Anji muttered during one of their hovercar trips to the countryside—something about _backseat drivers_. But the Doctor doesn’t really seem to be giving instructions, only expressing curiosity. Because he cares, comes the knowledge with a buoyant effervescence. Cares about this world he left to save itself. “In fact, they’re scheduled to go under in about a week’s time. But until then, since they form a sort of radio network, we’ll be broadcasting a celebratory concert through them.”

“Of course.” The Doctor sips his tea, smiling.

His smile fades as he looks up the street, towards the hydroelectric plant. Eventually he puts his cup down on the sill. “I had a friend. Bounce. She died in the flood.”

There’s no hint of blame in his tone. He only speaks softly, remembering. Perhaps it’s better, less painful than forgetting.

How much has he lost?

Karl wants to say something to make it better. Not _I’m sorry_ because it’s not about him anymore. Not _please stay_ because the Doctor is already staying, longer than he planned to at any rate. Karl would tell him _Have courage_ but surely the Doctor already does. He would say _This will pass_ but he senses that may be exactly the problem. Too much passes.

“You remember now,” he says. Sticking to facts. “You remember everything.”

“Yes.” His hands grip the sill on either side of the empty cup, the knuckles going pale. What has he remembered that makes him, if not broken, at least far, far wearier than when he had forgotten?

There had been freedom in not knowing who he was, where he belonged, or what he sought. In thinking that all he needed was a home and happiness. In imagining, even for a moment, that he could find them here.

Standing behind him, Karl raises his arms. The Doctor yields into them, his weight coming suddenly to rest against Karl’s body. He bears up under it.

“Let me…” Karl begins.

The Doctor nods.

He lets Karl lead him deeper into the apartment, lets him undress him, bathe him, bring him to bed. He stands under his own power and moves to help, but through it all he is pliant. Not passive so much as tired. No longer _presto_ but stop. Perhaps he has only ever been able to stop on Hitchemus; perhaps this place has always been that special to him.

Aside from his breathing, the whisper of falling cloth, the hiss of the shower, there is absolute silence. The thrum of his pulse as Karl runs soapy hands over his skin feels like the strings of a violin making their last vibrations after the bow is lifted.

His fingers wrap around Karl’s, and remain there as they lay down beside each other.

They don’t make love. Or to be precise, they don’t have sex. They remain like this, naked, damp skin and hair drying in the warm night, facing each other without seeing more than dim outlines. Only their hands touching. In silence at first, for a long time. Then, softly, the Doctor begins to speak.

He found home again. His real home. He found out what happened to it and…undid that (gaps emerge between and within his sentences, gaps Karl tries to fill on his own without pushing for more detail than the Doctor can stand to give). But he wonders now if that was the right thing to do.

“You know you’re in trouble,” he says, then chuckles without humor—a sound Karl has never heard from him before—“when undoing your mistakes might be a mistake.”

He’s still traveling. Alone, now. “They’re safe,” he says, perhaps in answer to an unasked question. “Most of them. As many as I…and as safe as I can make them.”

He seems to wander, taking another track. He tells Karl he just returned from a place called San Francisco, on Earth, where he was checking in on the aftermath of another of his adventures. His voice is warm, and everything seems to have ended happily—the gaps in his sentences now seem to hide more pleasant secrets, ones Karl knows he has no right to be jealous of.

“But why?” Karl asks. “You said you don’t go back, as a rule…”

“The rules are changing now.” The fingers entwined with his flex in what seems to be unconscious restlessness. “I’m trying to keep track of what stays the same. The integrity of the timelines—my own especially—and then…”

Karl waits.

“There’s a war going on,” the Doctor says. “With history itself as the battlefield. You might not notice it out here—you might not notice it ever—but it’s always growing, twisting everything. Our enemies are bad enough.” He shudders in what Karl recognizes with a chill as true fear. “Intolerant and implacable and everything I have ever fought against. But to stop them, my own people are doing things…”

Karl imagines, then, an entire world full of people like the Doctor. The sort of things they might do.

“I’m trying to save people,” the Doctor says. “The full extent of my involvement. I’m not a solider, never have been…not willingly. I _can’t_ do otherwise.”

But Karl remembers the being who stood like a god calling down lightning. Blasting their hope of rescue from the face of the world, summoning cataclysm and saying “Save yourselves.”

Saying, “I don’t forgive you, I understand you.”

Whose passion might be for life itself, but who knows as well as Karl that life is not always gentle or safe or free of ferocity.

Who will, Karl knows absolutely, save everyone he can save. No matter the cost. Even if he later looks back on it as a mistake; even if he has to undo it only to regret the undoing, too. How much does he regret already? What would be just a little more?

Karl remembers the moments in the clearing, during his imprisonment, when the Doctor had taken up his violin and played his own music back to him. Reminding him who he was. He wishes he could do the same—that he knew the Doctor well enough and had skill enough to reflect him.

He remembers something else, and it makes the corners of his mouth twitch. “But you’ve always been good at solving problems,” he tells the Doctor. “Like when we got rid of those tourists interrupting our rehearsal.”

He exclaims from the darkness, “The contrabassoons!”

In unison, they intone, “Honk honk.”

Karl breaks into giggles. The Doctor’s laugh is sonorous, but brief. Then suddenly he moves closer to Karl, lying length to length, clinging to him. Karl holds him back, with no other comfort to offer but his presence.

It’s so late in the night that it’s almost dawn when the Doctor rises, dresses, and Karl follows him downstairs. In the shadows backstage, there’s a tall blue box. When the Doctor cracks open its doors, what lies beyond seems to hold even deeper shadow, as if the space inside is vaster than logic allows.

He turns back to Karl.

And this really is the last time, Karl knows. The weight of it is heavy in his heart but peaceful. The war might never reach a tiny, distant human colony like Hitchemus; they will never even notice if it sweeps them up or ends. He will never know how the Doctor resolves the question before him, whether he will be soldier or savior or both, or neither.

Either way, the Doctor will change, he senses that; but how dramatic or devastating the change, he cannot even guess.

It is not his place to forgive him, and he doesn’t know enough to understand.

But before he leaves again, Karl finds the courage to tell him what he needs to say. “Whatever happens, Doctor, you’ve already played your concerto.”

“Karl—” He reaches out, and something in his face looks stricken. Or perhaps touched, so tenderly that it can't help but cause pain.

“We’re safe here. We’re alive. Humans and tigers, together. And it’s because of what happened…because of the lightning,” he whispers.

“You saved yourselves.”

“Yes.” Because they did; that much is theirs. “But we couldn’t have done it without you.” He takes the outstretched hand. “To us—to me, you’re always this. My Doctor. You’re the one who saved us.”

His words do seem to offer some comfort. Very faintly, the Doctor smiles. Then he pulls Karl’s hand to his mouth and kisses it delicately.

He steps back into the box. The doors close behind him. Karl waits, standing there, and watches as the ship begins to fade. It returns in glimpses, surrounded by grating and pulsing vibrations of sound. He doesn’t move, shoulders thrown back, letting the alien music run across his body. Until all he can sense of the Doctor, like the first time Karl found him by following the strains of his playing through a crowd, is a siren song. Calling, fading, returning, and gone.


End file.
